Drift Fishing question

[starcraft36]

I see a lot of threads talk about drifting for catfish, I primarily bottom fish. When you guys say "drift" do you mean dragging a bottom rig, or something else? Just curious what the rig would look like to drift without snagging everything!

[Smoothkip]

There's a few different ways to drift. Sometimes I'll just drop my bait off the side of the boat till it hits bottom and I'll reel up a few cranks and put it in the rod holder. Another way that I've used is a rig like a drop shot the use in bass fishing just a hook tied of your main line and a sinker tied off at the end.


Another rig that I like that's useful drifting and also can be used while still fishing is the santer Cooper style rig.

Hope this helps.

[rockbass]

I use what is called a Santee Rig Kip posted. I use multiple variations to try to figure out what is working best for the fish that trip. I troll using this rig since most of the water I am fishing is 4-18 ft. When the wind kicks up and makes controlling the boat more difficult I switch to drifting. I do both with a longer line out, not vertical.

[Seanstone]

Awesome question. I have too wondered the proper and improper ways to drift/troll for cats for quite some time. We have yet to give it a shot, typically because we found some good spots this year to sit and fish on bottom. However I have been doing some research on drifting, or controlled drifting/ trolling for a month or so now.

Here's a pretty educational video on free drifting. IE drifting with no trolling motor to control you. Controlled drifting is simply adding the use of a motor to keep yourself on course. And then Trolling would be drifting without current, instead you use your trolling motor to do the same thing.

[starcraft36]

Jan 31, 2012 17:23:26 GMT -5 rockbass said:

I use what is called a Santee Rig Kip posted. I use multiple variations to try to figure out what is working best for the fish that trip. I troll using this rig since most of the water I am fishing is 4-18 ft. When the wind kicks up and makes controlling the boat more difficult I switch to drifting. I do both with a longer line out, not vertical.

What size weight and float would you use? Just curious, cause the only times I tried, seem to snag quite a bit. Thanks for the help.

[Smoothkip]

I try to use the lightest sinker I can get away with. Keeping the bait down but not so much that your plowing the bottom. Most of the time when we drift lakes I use a 1 oz. Bank sinker on the drop shot rig. Sometimes you have to try out different size floats to see what's best for the situation. A 1.5 to 2 in. Peg float usually does the trick for smaller chunks of cut bait. They make an actual drift sinker that is supposed to really help with snagging up.

[bassmassey]

kip that snake weight is mainly what makes a santee rig........where'd ya find that pic? looks like my buddies weights that he sells, he color codes the different weights...alot of people make their own with buck-shot and parachute cord, if you buy them at the bait shops down there you're gonna pay a small fortune

[katfish]

Before the introduction of snake weights, I drifted Santee Cooper for blue cats. The only rigging I knew was what everyone used there. These were the most economical rigs they could make up because no matter how you rigged you eventually got hung up on submerged timber. On tough days most fish were caught as you drifted over the sunken trees.



I made my own pencil weights by pouring lead into different lengths and diameters of steel tubing. The eyes were cotter pins with wide smooth opennings. The small pieces of steel tubing were the result of control piping I installed while building machinery.
While we drifted we saw the submerged timber on graphs and watched caefully to "help" our rigs over the snags.
This example was made with hooks I had available. At Santee I used a 7/0 circle hook baited with cut herring. I would get dead herring free from Blacks Camp. They sold live herring to striped bass fishermen and were glad to have someone remove the dead ones from their giant cement tank.

We bought the styrofoam floats in bulk and usually cut them in half to save money. I would improve them today by snelling the hooks on even though I have to rely on the other two knots on the swivel.

Most of the blue cats we caught were 5-15 pound blue cats with an occasional flathead thrown in on slow drifts. I caught over 200 pounds of fish on several days. I took my wife once when she got so tired of reeling in blues she requested we go to the canal and catch white perch for flathead fishing ;D

[starcraft36]

Awesome information guys, thanks for the help.

Look forward to trying these ideas this Spring!

[Smoothkip]

@ Aaron I did a google search for slinky weights and this was a pic I came up with. A lot of guys also use hollow shoestring to make them.

[redcat]

Try this one, walking floats down the river for big channel cats. You can start at about the 6min mark if you want to skip over the muskie segment.

The host of this show isn't much of a catman but he knows how to fish thats for sure. I have tried this method from shore years ago without any luck. It seems that it doesn't work well when you are cross current.

[gotmehooked]

I used the santee rig also, but I would put a stop knot a couple inches above the hook so that the float didn't go right to the hook. Don't know if it matters, but my thoughts were the fish might shy away from taking the bait if the float is right up against the hook.

[Smoothkip]

Those are peg floats. There are stationary on your line they don't slide freely.